Bloodshot - Cherie Priest [117]
I took my time, walking up slowly to the correct suite. The door was propped open just a sliver with a plastic wedge. I pushed it, and poked my head around it.
“Hey there!” said someone less authoritative and decidedly younger than the original speaker. The kid was a teenager, maybe a couple of years older than Domino. In the back of my head I had an idea that this was an activity for the eighteen-and-older crowd, but I wasn’t about to start quoting chapter and verse from fictional guide manuals within five seconds of entering the room.
So instead I just said “Hey there” back.
The room had quieted considerably, merely by virtue of—I realized almost immediately—the presence of a woman. I was the center of attention, and conspicuous without even trying any fangy little tricks. Almost parroting Cal, I said, “This where the parkour people meet up?”
A large grunt of a man stood arms folded, dressed and posed like a GI Joe action figure. He said, “This is it.”
He was maybe in his early thirties. Hard to say. Narrow face with few lines, but deep ones. Crew cut that had his sandy brown hair as tidy as a low-shag velour. He looked to be in charge and I assumed he was the lieutenant, but I didn’t accuse him of it.
I let myself shrink, doing that shy thing where you make yourself look smaller and talk somewhat softer, as if gosh darn it, you’re only a girl, and lookit all these big strong men. Because I have no shame, that’s why.
“Wow, okay. Cool,” I said, hoping I was approximating the speech of kids these days, in case I might pass for a teenager myself. I probably didn’t, but I knew I looked young and I made myself sound young. “I’m here to learn about it. Is that what this is for?”
“That’s what this is for,” he said. “Come on in, find yourself a seat. We’re just getting started.”
“Great,” I said, picking a spot toward the back and on the end. There were only four rows of metal folding chairs, each row about six chairs long. Most of the chairs were empty, but half a dozen were occupied—and three or four other guys, the veterans of the group, I guessed, were lurking in the background. They sat up against a folding table like the kind you see at church potlucks, and they fiddled with a coffeemaker or with cigarettes they weren’t supposed to be smoking indoors.
Or were they?
In Seattle, there are all these laws about where you can and can’t smoke, and mostly the laws amount to “you can’t smoke anywhere indoors, and only a few places outdoors.” So I might’ve only been surprised to see it because I’d been in the Northwest so long. Or there was always the chance that D.C. was every bit as strict, and the young bucks over there were demonstrating their powers of rebellion.
I settled into the chair, which creaked under my weight and stank faintly of rust, and I checked out my surroundings in the usual way—scanning for exits (two: the way I’d come in, and a second door on the far side of the room), counting my fellow occupants (ten, including GI Bolton up there), and calculating whether or not I could fight my way out if push came to shove (totally).
No one was sitting on either side of me; my nearest seatmate was three chairs down. He too looked young, and he was looking at me when he thought I wasn’t looking. Apparently a girl in the midst is a real treat at a sausage-fest like this.
Even if I hadn’t appeared supernaturally young, and if I’d only been the early-twenty-something I’d been at death—I still would’ve been the oldest person present except for Cal and the cross-armed boy-doll up front.
He glanced at his watch, decided that we were it for the night, and started talking.
“All right, guys … and, uh, lady. Welcome to the District’s first and premiere parkour field group and urban exploration society. I’m Tyler Bolton and this is my clubhouse, and you can take it or leave it if you like—but I’m here to make sure that everyone knows the rules, knows what to expect, and stays out of trouble. So if you don’t want to listen to me, then fuck off and get yourself arrested on somebody else’s time.”
Nods